The Creature Reads Paradise Lost, Plutarch, and Victor's Journal — Frankenstein

The Creature discovers a portmanteau containing Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Werter, which he studies intensely. Reading Paradise Lost, he compares himself both to Adam, as a solitary being with no link to others, and more often to Satan, feeling envy when viewing the cottagers' happiness. He then discovers Victor's journal from the four months preceding his creation in the pocket of clothes he took from the laboratory. Reading Victor's detailed account of his creation, including descriptions of his own "odious and loathsome person" written in language expressing Victor's horror, the Creature experiences profound anguish, crying out "Hateful day when I received life!" and lamenting that even Satan had companion devils while he remains "solitary and abhorred."

This moment crystallizes the Creature's existential crisis and provides him with the intellectual framework to understand his condition, transforming his self-perception from confused outsider to tragic outcast. The discovery of Victor's journal gives him concrete knowledge of his "accursed origin" and confirms that even his creator found him repulsive, deepening his sense of abandonment and foreshadowing his eventual turn toward vengeance. The literary allusions, particularly to Paradise Lost, establish the novel's central question of whether the Creature is a fallen Adam or a justified Satan rebelling against an irresponsible creator.